From Tom Sawyer to Captain Underpants: contested and banned books in Cotsen Children's Library collection

If you have been paying any attention to the news in recent years, it may feel like attacks on libraries, publishers and intellectual freedom have reached previously unseen levels. While the current situation is far from peaceful, church, state and (surely well-intentioned) concerned citizens have been challenging books as long as they have existed. Children's books have been under even more scrutiny, because everyone wants to play a role in shaping the minds of future generations, and isn't it brave and virtuous to protect innocent children? Come to Special Collections and learn some fascinating stories of censorship, restrictions, claims and rebuttals from different countries and eras. With case studies from Cotsen's collection we will explore how people react to information and practice reading intelligently and critically to get to the bottom of controversies and maintain intellectual freedom.

Meet the Facilitators:
Dr. Andrea Immel has been the Curator of the Cotsen Children’s Library since its founding at the Princeton University Library in 1995. She has published reviews, articles, and books on historical children’s books 1660 to the present. Since 2014 she has blogged about illustrated children’s books in the rare books collection and on the contemporary market. One of the topics she follows is book banning. Other interests include propaganda aimed at children, national identity stereotypes, the representation of war, and the repurposing and packaging of content across time and formats.

Minjie Chen is a Metadata Librarian who leads the cataloging team of the Cotsen Children's Library. In addition to her work with metadata that enhances the searching and discovery of cultural artifacts related to childhood, Chen is interested in studying how children's reading materials influence young people's understanding of gender roles, sexuality, moral standards, history, and science. She is the author of The Sino-Japanese War and Youth Literature: Friends and Foes on the Battlefield (Routledge, 2016), which analyzes how Chinese comic books selectively portray or suppress Chinese people's wartime experience, profoundly shaping the postwar generation's collective memory and amnesia of the triumph and trauma of the war.

Maria Gorbunova is a Rare Books Cataloging Librarian with Cotsen Children's Library Cataloging Team. Prior to moving to Special Collections, she cataloged books in various Slavic languages on Princeton's Western Languages Cataloging Team. Before coming to Princeton, she cataloged children's books for the Ellery Yale Wood Collection of Children's Books and Young Adult Literature at Bryn Mawr College. She is interested in history of Soviet and post-Soviet publishing for young readers, censorship, "samizdat" and "tamizdat", and book illustration as creative outlet and means of survival for artists under dictatorships.

What to Expect: Single Workshop (up to 3 hours total)

To request accommodations for this event, please contact the workshop or event facilitator at least 3 working days prior to the event.

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